I think it's important to me as both a teacher and a mom. I have a poster in my room that says, "it's ok to not know but it's not ok to not try". We talk about what that means whenever we need to. I haven't really noticed a problem with effort in my classroom, which I think is good. 2nd graders are naturally curious little people, and, I think, when you throw them into a supportive environment, are brave little people, too. Failure is inevitable. Mistakes mean we are trying. Classroom mantras.
I get down on my teacher self a lot. I think of all the things I want to do and see the gap in what I am actually doing. I forget how much I really do, I think. But I had a nice little reminder the other day. I hope I haven't posted it before.
One of my students is chronically tardy. It used to get me down, man. But I decided--I have no power over this. I am not going to get frustrated about it every single day. Anyway, this student strolled into class one morning--big. huge. grin. staring at me, expectantly.
"Good morning! I am so glad to see you! Get your backpack hung up and get over here! We have work to do!" Something like that. Something cheerful and happy and enthusiastic.
And that grin got even bigger, and as the coat/backpack were being hung up, that student said to me, laughing a little, "Mrs. Blair, I knew you were going to say that."
Which tells me: I must be doing something right. If my students can walk into our classroom and know that I will smile at them, tell them how happy I am to see them, get them busy right away...if they can count on me like that...well, that's something I'm pretty pleased about.
No comments:
Post a Comment